Gina passed many an hour helping Des with his Italian, his Spanish, and his French (and she knew Basque too — and even Mallorquin!). So Daphne, what do you think? Why would a girl who can speak six languages go around with a bloke who can barely speak English? Plus she’s a famous sexpot — and he’s almost a virgin! What’s Jezebel doing with Joseph? What’s the princess see in the frog? What’s Gina’s game?
One half-term morning in the chill fall of 2008 he looked in on Gran and found her frowning over the Daily Telegraph with a biro in her hand. He said encouragingly, Back on the crosswords, are we?
There was a silence, and without looking up she said, One clue. For a week I’ve been staring at it. One clue.
… But Gran, some are more difficult than others. You always said. Depends on the setters. They vary.
She handed it over. And the crossword, it wasn’t the Cryptic — it was the Kwik! The single clue that Grace had solved, or at least filled in, was 22 down. It went, Garden of — — (4). And in the bottom right-hand corner of the grid she had written, ENED.
And even that’s not quite right, is it.
No, not quite.
… So I’m going daft now am I?
Their eyes met.
Des. What happens when I don’t know what I’m saying?
It’ll pass, Gran.
… I won’t be able to open my eyes. I won’t be able to close my mouth.
No, Gran. The other way round.
And he felt he was preparing for a long voyage on a dark sea where, one by one, all the stars would be going out.
Why was Gina Drago seeing Lionel Asbo? Because she wanted to spite and goad — and thus reactivate — Marlon Welkway. Des tried always to be elsewhere; but anyone could tell how it was shaping. Gina’s pink cellphone, with its lip-prints and snowdrop spangles, took on terrible powers: every chirrup had the rousting force of a siren. She would answer it, saying, Well you should’ve thought of that, or Eff off, or, simply, Fuera! But sometimes she would get to her feet and laughingly leave the room with the instrument nestling in the cusp of her throat. Des kept his eyes on the floor … Whether Lionel had words with Marlon was not known; but nothing changed, nothing happened, until November, when destiny ponderously intervened in the form of RSP: Lionel received some stolen property, and was arrested for it.
He got two months in Wormwood Scrubs in west London. Des went to visit him on Boxing Day. The interminable bus ride, the blasted heath. Lionel, in his wrinkly dark-blue overalls, stood at the counter of the commissary snackbar. They ordered, and went to the square table with their hot chocolates and their bags of Maltesers. Over the years Des had visited his uncle in a great variety of prisons (and borstals and Yois), and Lionel, even when settling in for a much longer stay, never seemed more than mildly inconvenienced (Prison’s not too bad, he often said. You know where you are in prison). But today he sat in a propulsive crouch on the very brink of the tin chair. RSP, he kept direly saying, and shaking his head. RSP! … Des couldn’t understand why this should seem so staggering in itself, because Lionel was arrested for RSP two or three times a year. But as dusk fell (and as the wardens wordlessly impended with their keys), Lionel said,
You know what, Des? He put me here. Marlon. He done me! For Gina!
Des left him there, the tense slope of the back, the chainlit Marlboro Hundred … And even before Lionel regained his freedom the Diston Gazette announced that Mr Jayden Drago’s firstborn child, Gina Maria, was officially engaged — to Marlon Welkway! The day was already named. It was to be a Whitsun wedding …
As he continued on his journey, his journey from boy to man, Des found that the thoughts that stayed with him about his uncle were getting a little bit harder to file away. For instance. Lionel, sitting in prison, and hating it as thoroughgoingly as any sane and innocent man would hate it (but for completely different reasons). Or again. The unexpected element in his response to the defection of Gina Drago. Together with the hurt, the rage, the humiliation, and the tearing need for vengeance, there was the furtive glimmer of relief.
Things were at least much simpler now. On the day he came out Lionel challenged Marlon to what was called a garage meet (bare-knuckle, stripped to the waist, with paying spectators, no ref, no rules, and no limit) and Marlon of course accepted — but that’s another story.
On his seventeenth birthday (in January, 2008) Des threw a little party all for himself. The only guests were the pups, Jon and Joel (who were given a fresh bone each). Well, they were hardly pups any longer. On the move they were like missiles of muscle … He bought two flagons of Strongbow, and sprinkled a pinch of keef into a rolled cigarette. Des only knew a handful of things about his father. Edwin (as he continued to think of him) was a Trinidadian, and a Pentecostalist; he refrained — earlier on, anyway — from harmful liquors; as against that, though, he didn’t deny the clarifying effects of a pensive burn of keef. So Des sipped his cider, and smoked the sparkling grass; and he felt the spirit of Edwin darn its way through him: the smell of thick damp foliage, a vast church on a village hilltop, a fat moon sliced and swallowed by the sharp horizon. He knew another thing about his father — that he referred to babies as youths. Des knew too that Edwin was gentle. Cilla said.
It was just a little slip. Her legs shot out in front of her, her head twanged back and then twanged up again — but she was laughing when she got to her feet. As they walked home arm in arm the sun hit the thin rain, turning each drop into a gout of solder, and a fabulous rainbow of blue and violet bandily straddled the roofscapes of Diston Town … It was just a little slip. The autopsy report spoke of blunt impact to the head and epidural haematoma. But the phrase that held him was massive insult to the brain. And it was unfair, he felt, to say such a thing about Mum — because, this time, it was just a little slip.
As he rinsed the glass and cleaned the ashtray (and put the dogs out) and vaguely dreamed about Queen Anne’s College (the one poem, the cosmos of the University), something struck him as suddenly as the sun struck the rain on that last day with his mother: It will take a whole new person to make me whole. A whole new person. It can’t come from anything within. I’ll just have to … I’ll just have to wait. I’ll wait.
Where is she?
I’ll wait.
She was sitting next to him on a hardbacked chair. There were about twenty young people in the room (down from about thirty-five), and she was the only one present who was doing something sensible: she was reading (he stole a glance — The Golden Bough) … The rest of them, Des included, were merely helplessly and dumbly waiting, like patients waiting for the doctor’s nod. Every fifteen minutes or so a name was called … The setting was a panelled antechamber in Queen Anne’s College, London. A fat bee kept bluntly knocking against the window pane, as if seriously expecting the viny garden to open up and let it in. What was that doing here? It was early February. Des’s mind was clogged and wordless; the vertical ribs of the radiators, he felt, were giving off the acrid tang of a dry-cleaner’s. He wiped the sweat off his upper lip, and reached with both sets of fingers for his brow.
Are you nervous? she said, tilting her head an inch or two, but without looking up. I don’t mean in general. I mean at the minute.
Nervous? he said. I’m giving birth!
Oh don’t be …
Now he saw her face, under its weight of golden hair — the gold of sunlight and lions. And her exorbitant eyes, fairy-tale blue, and ideally round.
Well you know, she said, I was in a terrible condition this morning. Then I had a thought whilst I made my tea. I thought: What’ll they be looking for in myself? And I felt all calm. I’m Dawn.
I’m Desmond. They shook hands. Her voice was high and musical, but her diction, her choice of words, put him in mind of a category he could not yet name: the minutely declassed. And what was that thought? Dawn.
It suddenly came to me. Well, we’ve all got the grades, haven’t we. So what is it they’ll be looking for in ourselves? And it suddenly came to me. Eagerness to learn. Simple. I’ve got that. And I don’t doubt you’ve got it too.
Yeah, he said. I’ve got that.
Well then. Desmond.
She shrugged or shivered; her body sighed and realigned. And he saw her crossing the road, crossing one of the many roads of the future, and quite differently dressed, with her jeans tucked into knee-high boots, and in a tightish top — crossing the road, strongly stepping up to the island and then stepping down from it and walking on … He experienced a gravitational desire, just then (as his blood eased and altered), to reach out and touch her. But all that happened was that his face gave her its clearest possible smile.
Desmond Pepperdine, said a voice.
So it was his turn first, and when he came out, twenty minutes later, they bent their heads and winced at each other …
Dawn Sheringham, said a voice (a different voice).
As she gathered her things he said, ‘I’ll wait. If you like. I’ll wait and we’ll go for some tea.’
‘Ooh, I’d love a cup,’ she called out. ‘I’ll be needing one!’
He watched her walk off. He hesitated, and said, ‘… I’ll wait!’
As a result of a further steepening of Ernest’s depression, the Nightingales moved to Joy’s mother’s place in Hull. Des looked up Hull on the Cloud. Its sister city was called Grimsby. The fog that came in at night smelled of fish.
It seemed to Des that now would be the moment to get shot of Rory’s lip ring. But it stayed where it was. He opened his desk drawer: the sealed white envelope with the circular indentation, and the evil little heaviness at the bottom of it.
In September 2006, there was a much-studied but in the end unfathomable traffic jam which enchained West Diston — all the way from Sillery Circle to the Malencey Tunnel — for five days and five nights (it was relieved only by hundreds of grapple-hoists from RAF helicopters). In April 2007, there was an outbreak among local schoolchildren (all morbidly obese) of deficiency diseases not seen for generations (pellagra, beriberi, rickets). In October 2008, there was a weeklong nine-acre blaze in Stung Meanchey, enveloping the site in a layer of diaphanous smoke like the sloughed skin of a gigantic dragon (it was said to be very beautiful from the air).
The winters were unsmilingly cold.